I feel like humphrey dummy ready for the king’s horses to pull me together again; just picture me like a big egg in lederhosen with a slippery yolk stain on the backside, shell fragments in my hair and mouth: QUEER EGG FOR AN ODD OMELETTE. I am the burned out star in my own melted sky.

A woman is drinking wine with her id money. She thumbs through the book of life looking for a physician (God doesn’t like demands).

Two ephebes talk at a cafe: there they sit, full of sugary plague but too young to know it. Smiles and zits groomed slick with scents; hoping for some relief from the state they’re in. The state of tech catatonia. Sad, sad game.

Do you remember standing in line when the doctors used compression guns to shoot a liquid into the left arms of children on Main Street? It left scars in the left arms of the (eventually) CIA kidnapped murder/control victims; all children. But let’s face it, we all lost the potential of our real parents when pale men on horses wrote death and hell all over everything and took over the medical fields and high offices of West Virginia and the Colombian District. Isn’t it the one missing from congress, the one who’ll protect our children from the antichrists in the CIA and The House of Lords? Isn’t that the one who wrote Bene Kedem in our father court room was another angel from Babylonia? After 1963, the antichrists went into the banking, enforcement and court building businesses and never delivered the holy city to the church community. Now we bow our severed heads in trembling.

I see them in the sparkling plate glass of The Skeleton Grille, the hottest pizza joint in town: seriously shifty teens with fucked up genes and make-up stuffing their forlorn faces at the counter running along the restaurant’s front window. I put my index finger to my thumb and give them the sign.

Rebuke you legions in the name of God and The Holy Trinity. Satin wrapped Satan rest, ‘til ruin is over, He will not wear the mark of another man’s skin. Only Christ is that powerful. You can take the body from a soul But can’t take a soul from God with your intestinal intelligence.

Think eternity. Eat more FISH. No… eat less FISH. On second thought… DON’T EAT ANY FISH… IT ALL SUCKS. Mercury, lead and malicious tumors! They got us to where we crave the stuff, I tell you what. Now the sea’s sick and over-fished. Over fish. Over foul.

Our need to understand everything has outdone us and someone separated our father church community from our father estate and put a bible in prison for salvation and you mother fuckers can’t even read. This is what I’m thinking as I’m breathing exhaust on my little bike a dyke, looking around this dump a hump dump town.

This city plays original doing rip-offs for blood in those catacombs underneath. Machines are running non-stop, painting more money so bloated men can buy tighter new pants and tighter new skin and powerful pills that’ll knock you clean over in a seconal.

You think a little pile of numbers doesn’t have much to say and, even though they’d rather not talk, they are blaring red truth across white, saline-fill’d asses from here to Celebration, Florida.

Ever since man crawled out of that protoplasm filled garbage can he’s been looking for bargains. Looking for deals.

Stopping before a picture window, I shade my eyes and lean into the glass.

This is CHICKENSHIT FOR THE MIDDLE AGED SOUL.

Saints, please pray for me… now and at the hour of my birth. Angels, please guide me through this treacherous wonderland laughingstock facade town. False fronts and big cunts. I need all the assistance in the solar system. Have mercy on me… please have mercy on us. I follow a fine-line foods plan, learning how to dress myself according to Project Canned Underwear; they’re showing them on the showroom dummy who looks better in underwear than I do- certainly has a more uniform bulge.

Folded like a ceremonial flag, where shall I go now?

Mr. Green, my psychiatrist of choice, tells me to look deeply into the soilpipe of creation for the answers. After having done this (and nearly driving myself shit-eating mad) for the past six years or so, I notice that the brown spot on my nose has become more pronounced. I use it as a point of reference whenever I feel afraid or lonely. Whenever it starts to fade, I just go back and dip my nose in the pipe. Ahhhhh. The pipe of creation. This way, I remain fluent and flushed. I’m thinking about all of this bicycling along the juicy path along the foaming, chocolaty looking river that smells like hell boiled over. There’s that defense facility they conveniently placed along the river and there are signs all over this place warning of biohazard but folks still fish it in their waders. And here I am right in the middle of it. They built this landscape too savage for civilized men. I’m not civilized, though, so I fit right in.

I’m polluting myself again with more chicken choices for better value, as I pull into the drive-thru at Buckeye Fried Chicken. They won’t serve me on a bike so I cuss under my breath, park my bike and go inside. I won’t be deterred from inflaming my gall bladder and intestinal intelligences. I want all breasts, extra crusty and spiced so I fart lava. I want super-sized. I want extra napkins. I want a total of 12 zesty sauces. Lock me in. I savage this ‘meal’ like a man who’d emerged from being locked a fortnight in a basement.

I watch the screen hanging in the red, plastic dining area. We can’t help looking at screens… it’s like gazing into a fire. It’s the new window shopping. Is it a hard road or hardly a road? Is it a ghost hand flicking away the eraser bits that have rubbed my original thoughts down to white? No… it’s only a three minute ad about side effects.

I sit. No one looks or smiles or frowns at me. I get up and leave and no one checks me out. There’s this invisibility, a trait cultivated rather than conferred. I used to play at it when I shoplifted, when it was high stakes. Thing is, I’d gotten so good at it that- now that I no longer shoplift, no longer need to be invisible- I resent people for not noticing me. Why have I done this to myself… or have I? As I pass another pane of glass I catch my shadow-self… I’m a dark star, an imploding man-your-ism. I hope to God I can reappear when I need to be seen!

The view from the fishbowl works both ways. I say out loud. But, I must not be totally invisible because some alchynosed, potbellied sonofabitch with flames on his suspenders is giving me the cockeyes. Or maybe that’s just his eyes.

That could be me very shortly, I think or I say. Who the hell knows anymore? Anyway, I look past him, through the reflected noise in the display window and over the painted red letters at the newish camera eye hanging from the ceiling over the register, like an obsidian insect eye bulged from the water stained drop ceiling. I realize that this is the same hardware store I stole a hammer from a decade ago. I even think it was around this time of year. I hadn’t thought about this shit for a long time.

I lapse into a fit of even deeper anxiety, now. I find myself begging (the Holy Trinity and He of a thousand names and faces and hats) for a helping hand-out. My sweet Lord, help me in this the hour of my greatest stupidity! And have mercy, foul and malevolent spirits, I beg of you. My last good nerve is on fire. My stomach turns. I ache from head to toe.